LITERATURE REVIEW
There are a few underlying principles in our game plan, " How Are You Feeling Today?" The most basic principle is the Social Interaction Model whereby students are grouped together collaboratively to increase learner involvement to give students the chance to interact with students from different cultural and socio-economic backgrounds ( Eggen and Kauchak, 2000 ). Apart from that, Desforges ( 1998: 135 ) says that "…..there is an underlying view of the learner as an active participant, as having to share in the process of articulating a problem or its solution." This game gives heavy emphasis on group work. For instance, students have to discuss the answers within their group and each member has to cooperatively carry out these tasks:
Student A: paste picture of faces on the board
Student B: write down the sentence " I am ………when …………………."
Student C: read the sentence aloud with correct pronunciation
Group work will work out effectively in this game as it has educational or learning benefits. Group work can "help children to learn to get along together in a context where peers could help one another and realize their own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of others ( Desforges, 1998: 151). Eggen and Kauchak(2001) states that collaborative work allows students to learn to compromise, negotiate and motivate as they participate as group members.
We also based our game plan on Interactionist's Approach towards language learning. Interactionist's theory emphasize the necessity for learners to have access to meaningful and comprehensive input through conversational interactions with other students ( Lightbown and Spada, 2000). Through this approach, learners will be afforded the chance to engage in meaningful activities whereby they will be compelled to express and clarify their intentions, thoughts and opinions in a way that permits them to arrive at a mutual understanding in order to accomplish the goal of their game; that is to be the winner of this game.
As for the skill acquired from this game, students will be exposed to a repeated structure of " I am ……….when………….". This is a type of substitution drill, which can be founded on Behaviourist Theory. This theory is chosen, as it will reinforce student's learning as well as their vocabularies. The vocabularies can also be reinforced through pictures; that is the faces, which show different expressions of emotions such as happy, angry, sad, frustrated and confident and others.
The most important point in this game is; we ant students to have fun while learning, as this is most worthwhile activity that would help student learn English implicitly without soliciting their defensive barriers towards learning (increasing their affective filter). " Students need a contest, a match, an event, a test to grow. As teachers, you play a major role in giving students something to grapple with so that they can both test and improve their developing strengths" ( Gose, 1999: 3)
Lastly, I placed great burden on this statement:
"…………….this must be a friendly competition, perhaps something like an all-star game, where you hope to elicit both your best performance and your student's best performance" ( Gose, 1999: 3 ).